Tuesday, April 6, 2010

And they're off

The least unexpected piece of news this morning is that Gordon Brown has gone to the Palace to ask HM the Queen to dissolve Parliament and to call a general election for May 6. Ever since Gordon Brown became Primonse Minister (completely legitimately and according to the British Constitution, despite the various ignorant and hysterical outbursts) this blog and EUReferendum maintained that he, just as his various predecessors in a similar position, will go to the wire. Or put another way, Gordon Brown was not going to call an election until May 2010. As there were local elections scheduled for May 6, it made perfect sense for him to call the general one for the same date and not for last autumn or March 25 or April 1. Nor was there anyh indication that he was going to postpone it this time or declare an emergency situation that would allow him to stay in government for another 2 years.

If Labour's opponents, particulary the Conservative Party, had spent less time on hysterical outbursts and more on producing some ideas why we should vote for them, their electoral position would be a good deal better now. Yes, the opinion polls give the Conservatives a lead but it is a surprisingly small one, considering that we are at the end of the third term of a highly unpopular government.

All opinion polls show that there are around 12 per cent of the population that does not seem to want to support any of the three main parties. Nobody seems to know what will happen to this largish group - will they stay at home, vote for one of the small parties or grit their teeth and put a cross against one of the large ones. Nobody seems that bothered either, with the Conservatives veering between complete smugness about people "coming back" to them and equal smugness about not needing the core Conservative vote.

Meanwhile, the Boy-King tells us that he is a nice man, loves his family, wants to introduce something called a Big Society in Britain and has thought of the possibility fo 5,000 community organizers to ensure that people lead communal lives. Not one of those ideas would make real conservatives vote for him so he and his party have to fall back to their one and only argument: David Cameron is not Gordon Brown. A corollary of that is: Samantha Cameron is nicer than Sarah Brown, a slightly more doubtful proposition, apart from being completely irrelevant.

In the meantime, let us not forget, that the real government in Brussels is not about to change any time soon.